Rainbow
by Paloma Latina
Summary: Remus' parents always wondered why he liked the rainbow so much... [OneShot. From a Reviews Lounge Challenge. DH Spoilers.]


**Author's Note:** Dear readers, this is my newest one-shot, based on a challenge from the Reviews Lounge Forum. We all pick a character – Remus, for me – and write a one-shot, inspired by the word 'rainbow'. This fic is also posted in the collection under the author Reviews Lounge and I suggest you check it out if you like this one. Each 'chapter' is from a different author about a different character.

I'd like to also mention that this story was co-written by my sister, MentalLady, and that we will be writing another one with the character Salazar Slytherin. Enjoy!

WARNING: DH SPOILERS!

* * *

**Rainbow.**

Remus Lupin always loved the rainbow. As he grew up, he used to wish it would rain just so he could run around the backyard and try to spot the rainbow from so far down on the soggy grass. His mother and father would always call him inside.

"_You'll catch the flu!" his mother used to call, holding a cooking pot._

"_Just a minute, Mum! I have to find a rainbow first!" he would yell back, frantically trying to climb a tree so as to see further away in case he missed the rainbow._

_At that point, his father would always pull Remus out of the tree and sit him on his shoulders. "I'm taller and safer than any tree you'll ever climb, son!" he would say proudly._

Remus smiled at the memory as he walked along. He had no idea where he was. It was entirely white. It stretched on and on for as far as he could see. It every direction, the whiteness enveloped the surroundings. Remus had no idea how he arrived in the strange place.

The last thing he could remember was Dora's face, looming in and out of his vision. Her face was lit up with a smile and her eyes were twinkling. Everything else was a dark blur. Well, he could also remember a green flash of light followed by a murky haze faintly resembling the colours of the rainbow. The vision stuck in the front of his mind. Something was wrong.

He was dead. He knew that much.

* * *

Remus' parents always wondered why he liked the rainbow so much. It was because of the colours, what they reminded him of, what they made him feel and remember.

Yellow, orange, pink, red, green, blue, indigo and violet.

The yellow made Remus feel happy and content. It was the colour of sunlight on his pillow. The colour dress that his wife wore on their wedding day. It was just one of those humbling memories that make you smile, even if sadness is staring you right in the face. He didn't mind yellow flowers, actually. Not that that had anything to do with it. But Remus had met many people in his life that claimed yellow flowers were for funerals and grandmothers' birthdays. Remus disagreed. He thought they were the perfect colour flowers to give a lady when you accidentally broken their heart. And he was no stranger to that.

Orange reminded him of flames. It brought back memories of flooing over to James' house whenever Lily turned him down. Those were the good times. Sirius and Remus used to cheer him up by playing Flame Thrower. It involved holding flames in your hand and throwing them over a certain distance to hit a target. The closer the flames were to the target, the orangeier they were. Sirius used to throw them at the cat. The poor thing would jump around, thinking he was on fire when, really, the flames were harmless.

Pink reminded him of Tonks, his beautiful wife. She always wore her hair in her customary shade of bubblegum pink. Of course, she would change the colour for special occasions or unintentionally when her mood changed. He could distinctly remember her hair going gold when she slipped over on an icy street on one of their first dates and let out a high-pitched laugh. He wasn't sure what the gold colour meant, but he assumed she was just surprised.

A few days after meeting her, Remus found himself absent-mindedly walking into corner shops, buying pink bubblegum and sitting down to just stare at it. All a bit frightening at first. But, he soon came to realise that it was because he loved her so much that the colour would brighten his day, make him smile and turn him slightly tipsy all at the one time.

And that brings him along to red. The colour of love. Oh yes, and love it was. Tonks brought out the best in Remus, even at the darkest of times. He could remember thinking he was in love countless times during his Hogwarts days, but it was never the same way he felt about Tonks. His little Dora meant much more than _that_ to him. Love was the thing that killed him, that saved his life, that killed all his friends and that save countless millions. It was the death and life of him. Nothing meant more.

Then, of course, came green. The green reminded him of the soft grass that he used to collapse onto with the rest of the Marauders under their beech tree and of the forest that he grew up next to. He used to play in the forest by himself when he was younger. His imagination would run wild as he frolicked around in its clearings. Some days, he would pretend to be a King and command armies into battle. Others, he was a brave pirate, collecting treasure and fighting against sea monsters. What ever he wanted to do, or be, he could.

Unfortunately, he had one very painful memory associated with that mysterious forest. Within its high, leafy walls created by the trees, he came across one ferocious beast called Fenrir Greyback. Remus couldn't remember the details. When he flipped through the memories in his head, all that he could extract was the memory of a dark shape, feeling scared and alone, running and finally a sickening howl. That was all.

He didn't like thinking about it, really. But life made it hard for him not to. It felt unnatural to him that a place that he grew up in and loved could be even remotely related to such a horrible incident that endangered the lives of those he loved. But for some reason, the rainbow and his condition being connected didn't make his transformations any more painful. It, unusually, made it easier to deal and come to terms with.

Blue was one of his favourites. It wasn't quite the colour of the sky, yet, it wasn't the colour of the sea, either. That was what made it so enchanting. It was different. Unique. Unusual. Rare... Frightening... Just like him. And it worried him.

He confided this fact in his wife. She refused to believe it. She told him that if he ever thought of that again. She would personally see to it that he would never be able to speak again. She said it with such a force that he was too afraid to move. He relaxed ever so slightly when she followed the comment up by asking if he wanted apple or cherry pie for desert.

It comforted Remus – the thought that a colour like the blue in the rainbow, which was so different, could look so beautiful and at peace up in the sky. It gave him hope when he took his monthly transformations. Although he was different, he had a place too. With his wife and newborn child.

The blue also reminded him of his mother's special room. In it, she kept paints, drawings, sketches, pictures, fabrics, books, photo albums and other, precious, little items she held dear. The walls were painted a cream colour, but his mother had always complained and vowed to one day paint over them with a blue. Remus never saw the point as a little kid – the walls were completely covered anyway. But, after she died, he walked into the room, cleared it out and sat down to paint. It looked magnificent now.

_Not that she is around to enjoy it_, Remus thought bitterly.

Indigo was the most painful stripe in the rainbow to look at. It was the colour of the flowers at Lily and James' wedding. It was the colour of fabric used in the bridesmaids' dresses. It was the colour of champagne that the waiters served at the reception. It was the colour tie that he, Sirius and James wore.

The wedding was small and quiet, but that was what made it fun. James and Sirius played with the birds while Remus and Lily danced around, smiling and laughing. Lily's parents, along with James and Remus', were all gone by the time the wedding rolled around. Remus could remember feeling very low about himself when Lily asked him to walk her down the isle in place of her father. He was honoured. At first, he claimed that she could find somebody better to do the job, but he quickly gave in to her glare and accepted the offer.

Lily, James and Sirius meant the world to him. They were his only family and they had slipped through his fingers, betrayed by the man they trusted. He always felt a twinge of pain in his heart when he thought about his old school friends. It mingled with a stab of anger at the man who had let them slip away. Peter Pettigrew.

Violet was a much softer memory. It was a very happy one. It was the colour of his newborn son's eyes. Dora had told him that when she was first born, they new she was a metamorphous very quickly. Well, it was the only reasonable explanation for why her hair and eyes were both lime green. And how her toes changed shape on a daily basis.

Tonks was over the moon when she found out Teddy Remus could switch his appearance at will. However, this excitement was very much extinguished and replaced with fear when, three weeks after he was born, the newborn unexpectantly grew a lot of fur and rather sharp teeth. He, however, was not a full werewolf on the night of the full moon and Remus was filled with joy by this.

For months, and blanketed by fear in the back of his mind since he turned twenty, he had been worried that he would pass on, to any member of his offspring, the horrible curse he had lived with since he was only a little boy. On the night of Teddy's second full moon, Dora insisted that Teddy sit with Remus while they were both transformed. Remus had no choice in the matter. She had threatened to switch the mind-controlling potion he took before transforming with Essence of Insanity.

Remus was scared that night. He had taken his potion, curled up next to the fire and was almost asleep when she walked in. Teddy was in her arms. She had never seen him in werewolf form; he had made sure of that. What if she was disgusted? What if she left him? Dora walked over to him and placed Teddy, asleep, on the floor next to him.

_Dangerously close to my paws_, Remus had thought.

What if he got scratched? What if he woke up and was scared? But there wasn't any more time to think about that. He was almost asleep himself. Tonks pulled Teddy onto her lap after a few minutes of staring in wonder at Remus. She crawled over to him and curled up on the floor next to his paws. The little family slept like that that night.

* * *

Remus smiled again at the thought. He could really do with some family now. He kept walking in the whiteness. He had been walking for what felt like hours. It true fact, it had been only two. He was bored. Very bored. It would seem like the time, or the place, for such immature things. But he was very, very bored.

"So, Remus, my good man," he said, trying to occupy himself. "What's new?"

He looked around, just in case, before replying.

"Not much. Although I do believe I just died."

The idea sounded a little saner in his head.

"Where are you, Dora?" he muttered, continuing on his way.

He walked a few more steps before he heard a little popping sound. He spun around wildly, but nothing was there.

"TONKS?" he bellowed.

No answer.

"_TONKS!_"

"REMUS?"

He had heard it, but it didn't come from any direction. It just bounced around, what he imagined were, the walls and echoed through his head.

"Where are you?" she yelled. He could tell it was his wife. "More importantly, where am I?" she muttered, but it was just as loud as her yell had been.

"I don't know!" He spun around again. "_Where_ _are_ _you_?"

"I would answer, but I don't know."

Remus sighed and sat down on the white floor. "Tonks? What just happened?"

He heard a sniff and the faint sound of a tear drop onto the ground. "You were killed. Right in front of me."

Remus froze. He didn't mind being dead, but knowing that Dora had seen it made him feel angry with himself for being so reckless.

"What about our baby?" his wife whispered. "What's going to happen to Teddy?"

He hadn't thought about that yet. The idea of being a father still was to sink into his mind. He kicked himself for, again, being careless.

"I don't know, cupcake. Harry will look after him."

"But, honey bun, what if he doesn't make it?"

Remus grinned. "He is James and Lily's son. Of course he will make it!"

He could almost hear Tonks smile. "Now what? Where are we?"

Remus sighed again. "Not sure..."

"Hmm..." Tonks mumbled. "What if I tried..._this_?"

Remus was about to ask 'This what?', but before he could, he was spinning _very_ fast.

**Pop!**

Remus slowly stood up from where he was lying on the floor. He seemed to be in a house of some sort. A living room. He searched the walls before realising he knew exactly where he was – The Potter's living room. He grinned and started running through the door to the kitchen. Before he could make it the whole way, he collided with something hard. Dora.

"Remus!"

"Dora!" Remus picked her up and spun her around, grinning. He put her down and grabbed her arm. "Come on! We have to look for Lily, James and Sirius!"

The words had barely even left his mouth before three new figures joined him in the room. Lily, James and Sirius looked just like they did before the Potter's deaths, only, slightly more upbeat.

He stared at their faces in turn. Lily looked as kind as ever, James looked – as usual – like he had just jumped off a broomstick and Sirius had a cheeky smile plastered onto his face.

Sirius grinned. "Race you to the pool!"

* * *

**By:** MentalLady and RabbitohsGirl (sisters!)

**A/N:** Yeah, just a little cheeky ending we came up with! We hope you like it! Oh, and look out for the Salazar one which will be out shortly!


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